Sex at Dawn

And there are costs involved in denying one’s evolved sexual nature, costs paid by individuals, couples, families, and societies every day and every night. They are paid in what E. O. Wilson called “the less tangible currency of human happiness that must be spent to circumvent our natural predispositions.”² Whether or not our society’s investment in sexual repression is a net gain or loss is a question for another time. For now, we’ll just suggest that trying to rise above nature is always a risky, exhausting endeavor, often resulting in spectacular collapse.

Any attempt to understand who we are, how we got to be this way, and what to do about it must begin by facing up to our evolved human sexual predispositions. Why do so many forces resist our sustained fulfillment? Why is conventional marriage so much damned work? How has the incessant, grinding campaign of socio-scientific insistence upon the naturalness of sexual monogamy combined with a couple thousand years of fire and brimstone failed to rid even the priests, preachers, politicians, and professors of their prohibited desires? To see ourselves as we are, we must begin by acknowledging that of all Earth’s creatures, none is as urgently, creatively, and constantly sexual as Homo sapiens.

We don’t claim that men and women experience their eroticism in precisely the same ways, but as Tiresias noted, both women and men find considerable pleasure there. True,

it may take most women a bit longer to get the sexual motor running than it does men, but once warmed up, most women are fully capable of leaving any man far behind. No doubt, males tend to be more concerned with a woman’s looks, while most women find a man’s character more compelling than his appearance (within limits, of course). And it’s true that women’s biology gives them a lot more to consider before a roll in the hay.

Comedian Jerry Seinfeld sums it up in terms of fire and firemen: “The basic conflict between men and women, sexually, is that men are like firemen. To men, sex is an emergency, and no matter what we’re doing we can be ready in two minutes. Women, on the other hand, are like fire. They’re very exciting, but the conditions have to be exactly right for it to occur.”

Perhaps for many women libido is like the hunger of a gourmand. Unlike many men, such women don’t yearn to eat just to stop the hunger. They’re looking for particular satisfactions presented in certain ways. Where most men can and do hunger for sex in the abstract, women report wanting

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narrative, character, a reason for sex. In other words, we agree with many of the observations central to evolutionary psychology—it’s the contorted, internally conflicted explanations for these observations that we find problematic.

Still, there are simple, logical, consistent explanations for most of these standard observations concerning human sexuality—explanations that offer an alternative narrative of human sexual evolution that is both parsimonious and elegant; a revised model that requires none of the convoluted mixed strategies and Flintstonizing intrinsic to the currently accepted story.

The standard narrative paints a dark image of our species over a much brighter—albeit somewhat scandalous—truth. Before presenting our model in detail, let’s take a closer look at the standard narrative, focusing on the four major areas of research that incorporate the most widely accepted assumptions:

• The relatively weak female libido

• Male parental investment (MPI)

• Sexual jealousy and paternity certainty

• Extended receptivity and concealed (or cryptic)

ovulation

How Darwin Insults Your Mother

(The Dismal Science of Sexual

Economics)

What does the winning male suitor supposedly get for all his preening and showing off? Sex. Well, not just sex, but exclusive access to a particular woman. The standard model posits that sexual exclusivity is crucial because in

evolutionary times this was a man’s only way of ensuring his paternity. According to evolutionary psychology, this is the grudging agreement at the heart of the human family. Men offer goods and services (in prehistoric environments,

primarily meat, shelter, protection, and status) in exchange for exclusive, relatively consistent sexual access. Helen Fisher called it The Sex Contract.